Turd's Current Reading List

With many of you knowing that I'm such a voracious reader, I get emails from time to time inquiring as to what I'm currently reading. Here's what I've been reading lately.

First, with the 50th "anniversary" of the JFK assassination on the horizon, my interest in the conspiracy theories has been rekindled. Not wanting to re-cover the same territory, I went in search of some new material. First, I found this excellent piece of historical fiction from author Stephen Hunter:

And believe it or not, one of the foremost experts on the assassination is the actor, Richard Belzer. His latest book details all of the mysterious, untimely deaths of persons linked to the events of November 1963.

Moving on, you likely know that I'm a big fan of the "one man Death Squad" fiction genre. Whether it's Tom Clancy, Ted Bell, Vince Flynn (who sadly succumbed to cancer a few months ago), Brad Thor or Daniel Silva, I'm almost certain to hit Barnes&Noble as soon as a new release is published. If you haven't yet read the latest from Brad Thor, I strongly encourage you to do so immediately. It's right up your alley. Suspenseful but with a primary theme of corruption at The Federal Reserve.

And finally...I just bought this book yesterday and plan to crack it open tonight. Though I doubt that anything can rescue America from its descent into statist tyranny, the author vows to give it the old college try. OK, then. I suppose that the least I can do is read his book. Who knows...maybe he's onto something.

I always ask people who are smarter than me what they are reading. I recently had the opportunity to spend 3 days with a pretty high ranking civilian who works with the USMC in the Pentagon. When I asked him, he pointed me to the USMC reading list, which I did not know existed. Then he said, "But the book that everyone at the Pentagon is reading and discussing is not on the list. It is an old economics book called The Road to Serfdom."

But, I have stood in the window at the book depository. Ain't no way that one man with a bolt action rifle did it alone from that window.

Difficult to hold the rifle and fire towards the right at that angle. Impossible to get off 3 shots in 5 seconds, scoring 2 hits at a moving target.

Also, if Oswald did it from the window, he would have just passed up the straight on shot while the limo made the slow sweeping left turn. No way a marksman passed up that shot and then took the ones with the the car driving away.

Old arguments, but now way it went down the way the Warren Report says it did.

It’s one thing to joke about fashion, but another thing to joke about a designer’s spotty past with Hitler.

According to reports, Russell Brand got the boot from the GQ Awards afterparty after making a wisecrack about Hugo Boss’s ominous past manufacturing uniforms for Nazis.

“Any of you who know a little bit about history and fashion will know that Hugo Boss made the uniforms for the Nazis,” Brand said while accepting his Oracle Awards on the GQ Awards’ stage. “The Nazis did have flaws, but, you know, they did look f–king fantastic, let’s face it, while they were killing people on the basis of their religion and sexuality.”

Brand seemed to confirm the unfavourable reaction to his joke in a tweet.

Boss’ connection to Hitler’s regime wasn’t revealed until the designer showed up on a list of dormant accounts released by Swiss bankers in 1997.

Gold tracked oil lower today after Russia offered to work with Syria’s Assad to put their chemical weapons under international control. Firmer equities and equities at record highs showed risk appetite remains very high and “irrational exuberance” is back despite significant risks, including geopolitical risk.

Other risks worth keeping in mind are the likelihood of the Eurozone debt crisis flaring up once the German elections on September 22 are over. It is worth bearing in mind too, the coming political and possible financial fracas over the U.S. debt ceiling - U.S. Federal debt recently surged over $16.9 trillion.

The immediate risk of a unilateral bombing of Syria has abated but there remains a real risk of confrontation in the region and the possibility of a wider war in the Middle East involving Iran and Israel and their respective allies. This will support gold and could contribute to materially higher prices.

However, of far more importance to gold is the very tight physical market place which is manifest in the negative gold forward interest rates, gold futures still in backwardation and perhaps most importantly plummeting inventories on the COMEX.

Comex gold inventories have plunged more than 36% year to date, creating a market more leveraged than it has been for the last nine years. Inventories are down from 11.059 million ounces to 7.034 million ounces today.

As gold fell in recent months or was manipulated lower, depending on your viewpoint, store of wealth interest in physical gold rose, elevating physical premiums. This has also given traders incentives to take delivery and sell paper gold.

This shortage of readily available physical gold in large volumes will likely lead to even higher premiums by lowering gold's forward rates, straining borrowers and raising the likelihood of something we have warned of for some time - a COMEX delivery default.

A COMEX default on delivery of precious metals and specifically of gold bullion bars remains a risk. It is of significant importance and that is why we have covered its possibility since 2011. A COMEX default would have serious ramifications not just for precious metals markets but for the wider commodity markets, for the U.S. dollar and all fiat currencies and our modern monetary system.

As long as gold remains in backwardation and COMEX inventories continue to fall the possibility of a COMEX default cannot be ruled out – especially as gold and silver bullion inventories are very small vis-a-vis possible capital allocations or foreign exchange diversification to gold in the coming weeks and months.

We believe that the sharp fall seen in emerging market currencies in recent weeks will lead to an increase in central bank demand for gold in order to buttress and support devaluing paper currencies.

COMEX gold inventories are down from 11.059 million ounces at the start of the year to 7.034 million ounces today. This is worth $9.66 billion at today’s prices meaning that a handful of billionaires or just one powerful creditor nation state with large foreign exchange reserves, such as Russia, could corner the COMEX gold market and cause a default.

Russia’s foreign exchange reserves are at $508 billion . Mainland China still holds the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world, with US$3.4967 trillion at the end of June. It is followed by Japan, which had foreign exchange reserves of US$1.1876 trillion at the end of July.

The possibility of an attempted cornering of the bullion markets through buying and taking delivery of physical bullion remains real and would likely lead to a massive short squeeze which would see gold and silver surge to well over their inflation adjusted high of $2,500/oz and $140/oz.

I just finished reading 'Into the cold', about thermodynamics fueling the universe, men and nature. It was highly recommended by many and I recommend it highly to you. It's a book in the same league as Richard Dawkins 'The greatest spectacle'.

I had a unique window into JFK assassination history, years back. Because I was privileged to know a man now deceased...

This man was the third(and completely unmentioned) figure who was indicted for the murder of President Kennedy.

His name was Gene Bradley. He wasn't mentioned by Oliver Stone in JFK, because the director had the decency to go personally interview Gene, and ascertained that he was simply a total patsy. Thusly, they mentioned a "3rd figure", but never used his name out of respect.

Mr. Bradley was a fascinating man. He was preparing to join the C.I.A. when it occurred; he was a young and fresh face.

He was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

But make no mistake: his life was nearly ruined before it began by such an accusation. Because he was innocent, and because he knew powerful men were behind a total cover up in this crime against America, he dedicated the rest of his life to researching and discovering who was behind it, and why.

He gave a talk many years ago at a school I attended. He explained that it had to do with silver certificates and the Federal Reserve. At that time, I thought he was fascinating, but had not the faintest clue what he was talking about!

Not 1 in 100,000 folks have ever heard the name Gene Bradley, but now you all have. He was a soft-spoken gentleman, a tireless proponent for truth and freedom, and a humble man of God. I hope to be very much like him in my older years...

If y'all would like to read him in his own words...here's an interview I found that he did years ago. God rest his soul.

Note: Since I published, some of my readers have gone to great trouble and expense
to teach me about the Federal Reserve hoax and the hidden controllers of the world’s
economy, money, and power. I must now admit that the Apollo hoax is to the Federal
Reserve hoax as a firecracker is to an A-bomb.

Road to Serfdom by Hayek? Yeah-standard libertarian stuff. For those with time why not go to the big daddy of libertarian economics- Mises and his Human Action. But if you really want shorter, eye-openers, I suggest any of the following:

1. The Servile State (Mr Fix, conspiracies aside, this explains how we have conspired against ourselves)

2. The Free Press (showing that that press is anything but free.)

3. Economics for Helen

4. An Essay on the Restoration of Property (Pinig, have you read this?)

5. Flee to the Fields

6. Distributist Perspectives

1-4 were written almost a hundred years ago by H. Belloc- he predicted this crisis of capitalism. 5 and 6 are compilations of essays from various authors, H. Belloc included. One of them, (or maybe another Belloc title), has at the beginning, "To the goldbug. Godspeed." And if you read enough of his books you'll understand there is something worth more than gold. I like to think that Pining has found it.

"He says he thinks we've licked the problem of banks so big that even when they're terribly imprudent, the government can't let them go under. "[T]hanks to Dodd-Frank, regulators now have the tools to wind down any large financial institution and do it in an orderly manner. [...] Frankly, today, thanks to Dodd-Frank, regulators have the authorities to wind down any large failing financial institution. [...] Robert, this is something that I supported very actively through the late '70s and the early '80s, the idea of creating firewalls between some of the underwriting and market-making activities and the pure banking activities. I just think given the way the world has gone, that may be politically impractical and difficult. [...] Now, what I'm saying to you is we have powers and authorities to deal with failing banks. And they shouldn't be propped up. They should be liquidated if they fail. And if people want to take it the next step and firewall the risk-taking, market-making, underwriting activities off and separate that from deposit-taking activities, I think that would be a good thing. But I hasten to add the fact that those weren't separated was not a cause of the crisis."

"The world should prepare for a new financial crisis. The former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson in a guest post for the Handelsblatt (Wednesday edition) asks for this. "Is there a risk of renewed financial crisis? This is the question that most has been me since my departure from the Finance Ministry. I'm afraid that the answer is 'Yes' ", writes the longtime boss of the investment bank Goldman Sachs. "Despite all the progress made, there are a number of problems that concern me", so Paulson. The former Finance Minister named three reasons why he considers a repeat of the financial crisis possible.

"Five years after the financial crisis we have not made any progress on reforming state-funded housing lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac", Paulson writes. The mortgage lenders had to be nationalised in the wake of the financial crisis, are still in State hands. Because they throw off currently much money, it was politically difficult to shrink it to a manageable size, said Paulson. Ninety percent of the mortgages in the United States have State guarantees.

Reason number two: "we didn't go to the shadow banking market", so the ex-politician continues. It was still "more to do" to resolve the problems with repo transactions and there should be more transparency in the investment of money market funds.

Reason number three: "we still argue, if we have resolved the dilemma of too big to fail'-banks." Paulson proposes overlooking the important big banks: "the"too big to fail"phenomenon is unacceptable and must be removed from the world. Here, the best approach would be to minimize the advantages that large financial institutions enjoy, with the help of more stringent capital and liquidity requirements. "A strict regulation, including size restrictions and sale constraint could make bankruptcies less likely banks who can no longer control their risks."

On both sides of the account:

Nothing shocking, or particularly meaningful. But interesting to see the a) 180 degree difference in editorial spin on the two sides of the pond , and b) Hank the Tank coming out of his well-funded retirement to hawk a book and to reassure/scaremonger out of both sides of his mouth at once. Nothing like bamboozling the general public with contradictory statements (that can then be reconciled to have never been contradictory in the first place).

EDIT: ZH blurb on the same topic. As reader Confused comments: "He isn't concerned. He is plugged in. He is just giving the signal."

I've stood there and the distance is not what it's like in the Warren Commission report pictures. I mean the pictures are real, but if you pay the money and go up to the 6th floor and look down, it's not that far, about 6 car lengths horizontally, and down 60 feet or so.

Some live oaks have grown up over the last 50 years to block the trajectory of the, ahem, 1st shot.

has nothing to do with right-wing as many people think because of leftist propaganda. 'Nazi' or 'Nazism' come from NSDAP which means in German: Nationalsocialistische Deutsche Arbeitepartei. The first part of the name means: national socialism. Since when, socialism is right-wing?

I lack the PC-compliance gene and that, by definition, makes me an illiterate, toothless redneck living in a trailer park. But I got me a neighbor who's good at cipherin' and I done been told these books are good.

If you'd prefer history, maybe a reintroduction to the movers and shakers of the world. https://www.amazon.com/March-Titans-History-White-Race/dp/0620251174 "their wanderings to the four corners of the globe, and finally into space itself: This remarkable story of human endeavor is without parallel or comparison, and is a story of awe, inspiration and heroism."

The one I'm waiting for is https://www.amazon.com/Scalp-Dance-Indian-Warfare-1865-1879/dp/0811729079 "Drawing heavily from diaries, letters, and memoirs from American Plains settlers, historian Thomas Goodrich weaves a spellbinding tale of life and death on the prairie, told in the timeless words of the participants themselves. Scalp Dance is a powerful, unforgettable epic that shatters modern myths." I'm a fan of shattering modern myths, and our society provides a target rich environment. I've always found the "Indian as Hippie" myth demeaning to a proud people who fought viciously (terr'ists in modern lingo) to keep their territory. We should learn from them, not fabricate caricatures. But I do admit, I was drawn to it by watching Hell On Wheels, so i guess I'm still a mindless TV baby at heart.

I figure he must be a personal friend of Sinclair's There were a few times where Jim posted articles showing Ponly's charts that just showed gold suddenly spiking straight up our of nowhere with no real explanation at all, other than Jim's assurance that we can rest easy because "here is the chart that shows the future". Ironically I remember at least one time when the big day came and we got a significant drop instead.

Anyway, I'm with you, I don't get it either and I don't like the name Bo Polny and I certainly would never send it $20K even before seeing its very imperfect track record.

as mentioned a few weeks back Apple will now be taking everyone's fingerprint to put on file for the NSA on thier new phones.

"But the most significant news to come out of the event is a new security feature on the iPhone 5S called Touch ID, which is an app that allows users to use their fingerprint to access information in their phone.

The new function is essentially a fingerprint identity sensor in the home button on the phone that enables users to unlock their device. However, it can also be used as a substitute for passwords when making purchases, including in Apple's iTunes Store.

"Your fingerprint is one of the best passwords in the world. It's always with you," said Dan Riccio, Apple's senior vice president of hardware, at the event."

1453ET: EMERGENCY U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL MEETING ON SYRIA CANCELED AFTER RUSSIA WITHDRAWS REQUEST - COUNCIL PRESIDENT

1440ET: Kerry says any Syria weapons deal must be struck in bind UN Security Council resolution(Which Russia now opposes)

From the need to teach Syria (and all global chemical weapons using despots) a lesson they won't forget to losing 'allies' to bluffing Russia to deal-or-no-deal, strike request or no strike request, the bluster from the US administration has now devolved into total chaos. As the following headlines from the last week attest to - it seems no one knows what is really occurring. So do we want the ability to strike but but not use it? We have to strike to teach them a lesson but a political solution is preferable? We would like congressional approval but don't need it. Everything has changed and yet nothing has changed?

fascism definition: A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.

socialism definition: Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. there is plenty of room for overlap. that is the problem with defining political philosophies on a line from right to left. TF - can't you let it go? remember the good, and forget the bad. there's no need to fan the flames!

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